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Will Berlin punters care? In July 2017 posters in central Berlin announced that Stone serves 75 beers on tap (Photo: Brauwelt)
04 August 2017

Greg Koch of Stone Brewing likes a Sisyphus challenge

Why would a US craft brewer invest USD 25 million in a brewery in Berlin? Good question. In an interview with the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, published on 18 July 2017, Greg Koch explains why.

The chairman of the ninth ranking US craft brewer Stone Brewing and the developer of such offerings as Arrogant Bastard confessed that he is “a glutton for punishment.” As he went on to clarify, “when we opened in San Diego 21 years ago, nobody was lining up and asking for our beer. It’s the exact same thing in Berlin. The local populace is generally uninterested in our beer. Right now, it’s just the weirdos like us who drink craft beer. Everybody else just thinks it’s kind of strange.”

When asked if he just wanted to be the first American craft brewery to operate in Berlin, he replied that the old phrase, “Why do things the easy way, when you can do them the hard way?” fully applies to him.

Besides, Mr Koch considers himself “a bit a Europhile”. He believes people should have access to great beer. “That’s been our mantra from the very beginning. Just helping provide choice, which is now a thing that we commonly accept and expect here in the US and the better beer cities. You just have to remember back to a time when it wasn’t a thing. You had to sort of push that boulder up the hill. I guess I am just a boulder-pusher by nature.”

Stone’s Berlin brewery, opened in September 2016 after some delays, is reportedly on track to produce and sell about 35,000 hl beer this year. Most of the beer is for export, though, in particular to the UK and Sweden.

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